Rightways - Sowing the seeds of Succes

Monday, 30 September 2013

The UN General Assembly opened last week with an electrifying
speech by President Dilma Rousseff who slammed US cyber-snooping
activities with President Barack Obama in the audience.

INTERNET spying by the US government became a major issue at the
United Nations General Assembly last week when political leaders heard a
blistering attack by the Brazilian president who was visibly angry
about how her country and her own office have been targets of
cyber-snooping activities.

She called the US action a breach of international law, a grave
violation of human rights and civil liberties, and a disrespect for
national sovereignty.

It was condemnation in the strongest terms at the highest political
forum in the world, with UN and commercial TV stations beaming the
speech live.

The surveillance issue, which has caused ripples with continuous
revelations in the media emerging from whistle-blower Edward Snowden’s
files, has now reached the UN.

And in the most spectacular fashion. It was an extraordinary scene
when President Dilma Rousseff gave the opening speech among the
government leaders gathered for the annual General Assembly.

Traditionally, Brazil’s president speaks first, followed by the US
president. Thus, Barack Obama could not avoid hearing her speech.

Many had expected Rousseff to touch on the Internet spying issue,
since she had strongly criticised the US when the media broke the news
on specific instances of US Internet surveillance on the Brazilian
President’s office, other departments, including the Brazilian Mission
to the UN, and the national oil company Petrobas. She recently cancelled
a state visit to Washington.

But her speech and performance was far beyond what was anticipated.
With the atmosphere electrifying in the packed hall of leaders, the
Brazilian president cut out the usual diplomatic niceties while
addressing one of the most sensitive issues to have emerged globally in
recent years.

She called it “a matter of great importance and gravity ... the
global network of electronic espionage that has caused indignation and
repudiation in public opinion around the world.”

Rousseff described the Internet spying as creating “a situation of
grave violation of human rights and of civil liberties; of invasion and
capture of confidential information concerning corporate activities, and
especially of disrespect to national sovereignty”.

She started by laying the foundation of her argument: “A sovereign
nation can never establish itself to the detriment of another sovereign
nation.

“The right to safety of citizens of one country can never be
guaranteed by violating fundamental human rights of citizens of another
country. The arguments that the illegal interception of information and
data aims at protecting nations against terrorism cannot be sustained.”

She said she fought against authoritarianism and censorship, and thus
has to uncompromisingly defend the right to privacy of individuals and
the sovereignty of her country.

“In the absence of the right to privacy, there can be no true freedom
of expression and opinion, and therefore no effective democracy. In the
absence of the respect for sovereignty, there is no basis for the
relationship among nations,” she added.

Her speech touched on three actions. First, Brazil had asked the US
for explanations, apologies and guarantees that such procedures will
never be repeated.

Second, Brazil is planning actions to defend itself from the spying.
It will “adopt legislation, technologies and mechanisms to protect us
from the illegal interception of communications and data”.

Third, she proposed international action, saying: “Information and
telecommunication technologies cannot be the new battlefield between
states. Time is ripe to create the conditions to prevent cyberspace from
being used as a weapon of war, through espionage, sabotage, and attacks
against systems and infrastructure of other countries.”

Stating that the UN must play a leading role to regulate the conduct
of states with regard to these technologies, she called for the setting
up of “a civilian multilateral framework for the governance and use of
the Internet and to ensure the effective protection of data that travels
through the web”.

She proposed multilateral mechanisms for the worldwide network, based
on the principles of freedom of expression, privacy and human rights;
open, multilateral and democratic governance; universality; cultural
diversity; and neutrality of the network, guided only by technical and
ethical criteria, with no restrictions allowed on political, commercial,
religious grounds.

Delegates who hoped that Obama would respond were disappointed. He
did not refer to the Brazilian president’s address made only a few
minutes before.

He made only a passing reference to the issue, saying: “we are reviewing the way we gather intelligence.”

Rousseff’s speech came at the right time and venue, since people
worldwide have been increasingly troubled or outraged by the extent of
cyber-spying revealed by the media.

The issue is even more serious for developing countries. Media
reports indicate that there are double standards, with the US spying
programme requiring a special court procedure for opening data on
individual US citizens, while there is no such procedure for residents
outside the US, and thus the surveillance is comprehensive for the world
outside the US, with the citizens, companies and government offices all
being targets.

Moreover, the media reports show that the US actions do not stop at
surveillance. There are also schemes to engage in cyber actions or
attacks.

Rousseff’s speech at the UN indicates Brazil plans follow-up moves in
the UN for setting up a multilateral system to regulate the use and
misuse of the Internet. This would be a timely international response to
the recent revelations.

Sunday, 29 September 2013

Governments that deliberately pervert their spy agencies are shooting themselves in the head.

ALL countries operate spy agencies, so some of their practices and experiences are universal.

Governments deem intelligence services to be useful, even necessary,
in evaluating and anticipating events – so they are earnestly nurtured
and cultivated. However, whether and how far these services actually
contribute to policymaking depends on a multitude of variable factors.

The capacity of a “secret service” derives from the scale of its available resources – human, financial, technical, etc.

The richer a country the greater the means for developing its
intelligence service, and the more powerful a country the greater its
need or purpose for doing so.

Yet that need not mean that a richer or more powerful country would have a more competent intelligence service.

Unlike conventional institutions such as the armed forces, the
critical criteria cannot be the strength of numbers or the expanse of
field coverage.

Since the quality of information handled is key, spy agencies perform
like a scalpel where other security institutions act like meat
cleavers.

At the same time, all of them need to be coordinated and concerted through optimised complementarity.

Conceptually, the intelligence services are highly professional
institutions performing specialised tasks in the national interest.

In discharging their duties, they must observe laws and conventions that guide and limit their clandestine activities.

In practice, however, they are often politicised in the perceived interests of specific administrations.

This compromises their credibility, debases their status and subverts their effectiveness.

Another universal experience, regardless of a country’s developed or
developing status, is that the intelligence services are boosted in
times of great national distress.

Trying times are also the best times to stretch and test their capacities.

Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), for example, originated in the Secret Service Bureau established in 1909.

This was a joint effort of the War Office and the Admiralty, with a focus on Imperial Germany.

The impetus for the service developed with the exigencies of two world wars.

In the United States, the demands of wartime intelligence in the
early 1940s resulted in the creation of the OSS (Office of Strategic
Services) to coordinate information streams from the armed forces.

The OSS would later morph into the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), technically the first US spy agency.

The United States until then did not have a centralised intelligence agency, so the CIA emerged to fill the gap.

As it was with the SIS, the existence of the CIA was not officially
acknowledged until decades later. But what began as a fledgling effort
requiring British inputs soon ballooned into a US intelligence community
comprising no less than 16 spy agencies.

Intelligence agencies tend to have a civilian (police) or military
character depending on the needs of the state at the time. Nonetheless,
their constant is the primary purpose of protecting the state.

The early Soviet Union felt it needed to guard against
counter-revolution, and so established the Cheka secret police under the
Ministry of Internal Affairs.

The Cheka then underwent several transformations to become the NKVD,
which in turn experienced further transformations to become the KGB of
Cold War lore, in the process picking up military elements in the world
wars.

The Malayan Emergency (1948-60) was a domestic insurgency that exercised the resources of the police force.

The police department that focused on vital intelligence gathering
was the Special Branch, evolving under British tutelage during the
colonial period and developing further upon Malayan independence.

The latter comprises communications between individuals (Comint) and
electronic intelligence (electronic eavesdropping, or Elint) that favour
countries with bigger budgets because of the costs incurred in
technology and expertise.

However, while a common strength lies in surveillance or
information-gathering, analysis and interpretation of the information so
gathered often fail to keep pace.

Where analytical deficits occur, political interests often exploit these spaces to pervert the course of intelligence gathering.

At the same time, the quality of intelligence is sometimes patchy where official links are weak.

Britain’s SIS was thus handicapped in Germany during the First World
War, just as US intelligence services are now hampered in Iran and Syria
as they were in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

The problem is compounded when governments refuse to acknowledge
their inadequacies and prefer to give their own dubious capacities the
benefit of the doubt.

The mistake often lies in equating overwhelming military superiority with operational success requiring sound intelligence.

And so regime change in Iraq was described as a “cakewalk” and a
“slam dunk”, with unanticipated difficulties emerging once the plan was
operationalised.

A similar development almost occurred in Syria upon underestimating President Bashar al-Assad’s effective control.

Hyper-intelligence combines the prowess of two or more ally
countries’ intelligence services, taking spying to a whole new level.

The US-British “special relationship” is one such example, only that it is more than bilateral collaboration.

What began as a post-war agreement between London and Washington in
1946 soon encompassed the other English-speaking countries of Canada,
Australia and New Zealand in the UKUSA (United Kingdom – United States
of America) Agreement.

Focusing on but not limited to Sigint, this “Five Eyes” pact
formalises the sharing of intelligence on other countries that any of
the five spies upon.

Earlier this month, a leak by former US intelligence operative Edward
Snowden revealed that the UKUSA Agreement goes further than these five
Western countries. It effectively and routinely includes Israel as well.The National Security Agency (NSA) reputedly runs the most extensive intelligence gathering operation for the United States.

Its global reach is shared with the largest unit in the Israel
Defense Force, the NSA-equivalent Unit 8200 (or ISNU, the Israeli Sigint
National Unit), in unfiltered form.

That means anything and everything that the United States and/or the
other “Five Eyes” countries knows about the rest of the world from
spying are known by Israel as well.

It explains Washington’s determination to “get Snowden” – not only
are the leaks embarrassing, they discourage other countries from
engaging the United States in security cooperation.

The other problem is no less serious: politicisation, which corrupts
and perverts otherwise professional and competent intelligence services.

This amounts to blowback, a CIA-originated term meaning self-inflicted policy injury.

It (in)famously occurred when the US-British axis that invaded Iraq
built its rationale on the lie that Saddam had stockpiled “weapons of
mass destruction” (WMDs) – even when whatever little intelligence there
was had indicated that Iraq had dismantled WMD facilities years before.

It happened again when Washington insisted that Assad was responsible for chemical weapons attacks in civilian areas.

Not only had Russian intelligence and UN inspectors found anti-Assad
rebels culpable instead, but both German and Israeli intelligence had
privately cleared Assad of those charges.

The inside information available to diplomats had cast such doubt on
the US allegations that US-friendly countries such as Singapore refused
to accept Washington’s version at the UN.

Politics had dictated that the United States stick with its
allegations, just as politics had dissuaded Israeli policymakers from
correcting misinterpretations of intelligence data wrongly blaming
Assad.

Fiddling with intelligence for some passing gratification such as
attacking an adversary may seem tempting, but dumbing down vital
strategic data is a dangerous and costly exercise. It is also an act of
singular and self-defeating stupidity.

Contributed by Behind The Headlines: Bunn Nagara> Bunn Nagara is a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS) Malaysia.>The views expressed are entirely the writer's own.

Yuen, a Special Branch officer, spent most of his time being hunted down by the communists and was even shot in the chest.

Remembering heroes and villains

There is a flawed
perception that the fight against the CPM was a battle only between the
Chinese-dominated movement and the Malay-majority soldiers and police.
Many innocent Chinese lives were also taken by the CPM.

THIS
is not another comment about Chin Peng but a reflection on how two
Special Branch officers, both of Chinese descent, fought against him. It
is also a timely reminder to many of us who have not heard about them,
or simply forgotten about these heroes in our midst.

It is also
about the thousands of Chinese civilians who lost their lives because of
the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM), a reality which many have
forgotten or, worse, chosen to ignore.

There is a terribly
flawed perception that the fight against the CPM was simply a bitter
battle between the Chinese-dominated movement and the Malay-majority
soldiers and police.

The two Malaysians who dedicated their lives
to fighting the communists were the late Tan Sri Too Chee Chew, or
better known as CC Too to his Special Branch colleagues; and Aloysius
Chin, the former Senior Assistant Commissioner of Police and Deputy
Director of Special Branch (Operations) at Bukit Aman.

Too was
highly regarded as the master of psychological warfare and
counter-insurgency and his deep knowledge of the CPM helped the
authorities to fight the guerrillas. In fact, he was widely acknowledged
as one of the world’s top experts on psy-war as head of Bukit Aman’s
psychological warfare desk from 1956 to 1983.

In the words of
his long-time friend, Lim Cheng Leng, who wrote his biography, “CC Too
could read the communist mind like a communist.”

The web of
intrigue of how friends can become foes is exemplified in Too’s
relationship with Kuantan-born Eu Chooi Yip, the communist mastermind in
Singapore. Eu was Too’s special friend and Raffles College mate, but
the two ended up as foes in different arenas.

Aloysius Chin also dedicated his life to fight the CPM and I had the privilege of meeting Chin, who wrote the book The Communist Party of Malaya: The Inside Story, which reveals the various tactics used by the CPM during different periods in their attempts to overthrow the government.

Malaysians have never had much fondness for serious history books.
Worse, their views of historic events are often shaped by the movies
they have watched.

Unfortunately, movie producers, armed with
what is called poetic licence, often dramatise events to make their
movies much more interesting.

Who can fault them as they have to sell their movies?

But we really need to read up more about the events during the
Emergency era, especially the assassinations of Special Branch personnel
and the many ordinary policemen, who were mostly Chinese.

The
CPM’s biggest hatred was directed at the Chinese policemen, who were
regarded as “running dogs” as far as Chin Peng was concerned.

The
reality was that these Chinese policemen were the biggest fear of the
CPM as many had sacrificed their lives to infiltrate the movement,
posing as communists in the jungle.

It would have been impossible
for the Malay policemen to pose as CPM fighters, even if there were
senior Malay CPM leaders, because of the predominantly Chinese make-up
of the guerrillas. It was these dedicated Chinese officers who bravely
gave up their lives for the nation.

Between 1974 and 1978 alone, at least 23 Chinese SB officers were shot and killed by the CPM, according to reports.

In one instance, a Chinese police clerk attached to the Special Branch
in Kuala Lumpur was mistaken for an officer and was shot on his way
home.

The CPM targets included a number of Chinese informers, who provided crucial information, as well as Chinese civilians.

One recorded case which showed how cruel the communists could be was
the murder of the pregnant wife of a Special Branch Chinese officer at
Jalan Imbi as the couple walked out of a restaurant.

This was
the work of Chin Peng’s mobile hit squads. The assassination of the
Perak CPO Tan Sri Koo Chong Kong on Nov 13, 1975, in Ipoh was carried
out by two CPM killers from the 1st Mobile Squad who posed as students,
wearing white school uniforms, near the Anderson School.

Other
members of the same squad went to Singapore in 1976, shortly before
Chinese New Year, in an attempt to kill the republic’s commissioner of
police, Tan Sri Tan Teik Khim, but they were nabbed.

Another
notable figure in our Malaysian history is Tan Sri Yuen Yuet Leng, a
former Special Branch officer who spent most of his life being hunted
down by the communists during and after the Emergency years, as one news
report described him.

Yuen was shot in the chest in Grik back
in 1951 in an encounter with the CPM and the communists even tried to
kidnap his daughter while he was Perak police chief, so much so he had
to send her to the United Kingdom in the 1970s for her safety.

Their top targets included former IGP Tan Sri Abdul Rahman Hashim who
was killed in 1974 and the Chief of the Armed Forces Staff Tan Sri
Ibrahim Ismail who faced three attempts to kill him.

The CPM
targets also included many active grassroots MCA leaders. After all, at
the Baling talks in 1955, the government side was represented by Tunku
Abdul Rahman, David Marshall, the Chief Minister of Singapore, and Sir
Tan Cheng Lock of the MCA. The CPM was represented by Chin Peng, Chen
Tian, and Abdul Rashid Maidin.

The talks broke down after two
days – the deadlock was simple with Chin Peng wanting legal recognition
for the CPM while the Government demanded the dissolution of the CPM,
or, in short, their surrender.

In a research paper, Dr Cheah Boon
Kheng wrote that as of June 1957, “a total of 1,700 Chinese civilians
were killed against 318 Malays, 226 Indians, 106 Europeans, 69
aborigines and 37 others.”

At the end of the Emergency, the final
toll was as follows – 1,865 in the security forces killed and 2,560
wounded, 4,000 civilians killed and 800 missing, and 1,346 in the police
force killed and 1,601 wounded.

The figures, quoted by Dr Cheah, a renowned CPM expert, were taken from Brian Stewart’s Smashing Terrorism in Malayan Emergency.

The fact is this – many innocent Chinese lives were taken by the CPM,
and the killings continued even after the Emergency ended in 1960.

Anthony Short, in his book The Communist Insurrection in Malaya, 1948-1960, also wrote that the Chinese civilians suffered the highest casualties in the fight with the CPM.

At Chin Peng’s funeral wake in Bangkok, some of his old comrades put on a brave front to say they fought for revolution.

But they must have been let down by China, which they looked up to,
because in the end, it was Beijing which first down-graded its ties with
CPM and eventually stopped funding them entirely when it forged
diplomatic relations with Kuala Lumpur.

And today, China is a
communist nation in name only as its elites and people openly flout
their wealth and compete for the trappings of a capitalistic society
along with its ills, including corruption.

The CPM said they
wanted to fight the Japanese and the British but in the end, faced with
the resistance of the Malay majority, the people they killed the most
were Chinese civilians and the policemen.

And let us not also
forget the indigenous people of the peninsula, Sabah and Sarawak who
served in the security forces and were renowned for their jungle
tracking skills. They too suffered many casualties.

Among our
forgotten heroes are some who were awarded the highest bravery awards.
The point here is that all laid down their lives for the country as
Malaysians.

These are the facts of history. There’s no need to be
bleary-eyed because, in the end, we should let the realities and the
facts sink in.

They allegedly committed the offences at the same time and same place.
At the same court, Genneva Malaysia, Jit Meng, Tan and Kah Heng were
also charged with receiving deposits from the public without a licence
via a scheme involving gold transactions at CIMB Islamic Bank Bhd, Jalan
Kuchai Lama, between Jan 10, 2011, and Oct 1 last year.

Ng was also charged with abetting them.

Deputy public prosecutor Dzulkifli Ahmad proposed that bail be denied as it was a non-bailable offence.

"However, if the court allows bail, the prosecution would like to
suggest that each accused be allowed bail of RM5 million. This case
involves approximately RM5.5 billion in investments from 35,000
depositors."

Dzulkifli said the bail amount should reflect the severity of the offences.

In pleading for a lower bail, defence counsel A.S. Dhaliwal said the
fixed deposits of all the accused had been frozen by Bank Negara since
last year.

He proposed bail be set at RM50,000 for each accused.

Judge Mat Ghani Abdullah allowed bail at RM1 million for each of the
accused. He also ordered them to surrender their passports.

The judge fixed an additional RM100,000 in two sureties for offences
under the Anti-Money Laundering and Anti-Terrorism Financing Act 2001.

Ghani allowed the prosecution's application for a joint trial and fixed April 7 until 24 next year to hear the case.

Dzulkifli informed the court that the prosecution would call about 50 witnesses to the stand.

Four of them, Philip Lim, Tan, Hah Heng and Ng, were also charged
under the Banking and Financial institutions Act 1989 with two counts
each of accepting deposits without a valid licence via a scheme
involving gold transactions.

Earlier, Philip Lim and Tan pleaded not guilty at another Sessions
Court to making a false statement in an advertisement on the company's
website, saying its gold trading was in accordance with Islamic law.
Genneva Malaysia Sdn Bhd also faced a similar charge.

The case has been set for mention on Oct 28 and the two were granted bail of RM20,000 each.

Friday, 27 September 2013

The Penang Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has begun an inquiry into
the RM66 million e-Tanah facility, a computerised land administration
and management system, as only four of the nine programme modules are up
and running.

State PAC chairman Wong Hon Wai said the federal funded pilot project
started in 2005 but only the revenue, strata title, registration and
consent modules were working.

He said problems encountered with the land development, land
disposal, land acquisition, and enforcement and auction modules were
highlighted in the 2011 Auditor-General's Report.

"We are duty bound to investigate anything pointed out in the audit
report. The Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources project did
not pass the integrity, economy, effectiveness and efficiency (IEEE)
tests which were the terms outlined by the state PAC in conducting their
tasks," Wong said after chairing this term's first PAC meeting on Wed

In the meeting, State Land and Mines Office director Datuk Arifin
Awang, South and North Seberang Perai district officers Rohani Hassan
and Shadah Nawawi were called to give their statements.

According to the e-Tanah portal, the system was to handle the
administration and management of land offices, with Penang chosen as the
state for the pilot project.

Last updated in 2009, the FAQ portion of the portal stated that there
were 72,160 transactions and some RM385 million in revenue collected.

Wong said the PAC will be tabling a report and the recommended
solutions on the matter in a future session of the state legislative
assembly.

"Some of the issues we are looking for are possible leakages in the procurement process as well as loopholes," he said.

Thursday, 26 September 2013

The
ability to increase business value through innovation is a critical
success driver for most organizations. The markets that we operate in
provide both opportunity and risk from an innovation perspective as they
are rapidly changing.

Markets provide opportunities if we get it right and threats if we do
not, particularly given the intense competitive nature of most
industries. Our quest to realize innovation results is further
complicated by the complexities involved for most firms – the sheer
number of players to potentially coordinate with in the value chain;
rising costs; margin erosion; increasing regulatory, customer and
consumer demands; evolving business models; shorter cycle times; and new
sources of competition, just to name a few.

The good news is that if you can get it right, you stand to gain a
competitive advantage and will reap the benefits of increased revenue
and profits. Hence, the lure of identifying new growth opportunities,
increasing volumes and market share, securing a competitive advantage,
improving margins and strengthening brand loyalty, provides a powerful
incentive to be successful at product innovation. However, the
challenges that organizations face do not make this easy. Developing new
products and technologies is consequently one of the more complicated
initiatives an organization can undertake.

Take for example the telecom market wars occurring over the past
year. Samsung and Apple have emerged as two clear winners that have been
able to leverage powerful innovation machines. The competition (Nokia
and Research in Motion) have stumbled badly in their respective
innovation capabilities and ultimately paid the price in the
marketplace.

Figure 1: The Innovation Performance Framework

The Innovation Performance Framework™ (Figure 1) is a useful
framework that examines the complexity and addresses some of the
challenges in product innovation by separating them into four key
themes: product innovation strategy; portfolio management; new product
development process; and climate and culture (see Figure 1 for
illustration). Interestingly, past studies suggest that organizations
that excel or master these four key themes do, in fact, achieve better
results from their product innovation efforts.

Let’s examine some of the challenges innovators have in each part of The Innovation Performance Framework:

Product Innovation Strategy: It all starts
at the top. If there is not a clear and crisp product innovation
strategy that supports the business strategy, problems begin. Some key
challenges are: Do we have one? Is it clear? Is it the right strategy?
Is everyone aligned? Are people walking the talk? Are there realistic
expectations on new product revenues?

Lack of a product innovation strategy tailored to support the strategy of the business is often cited as a most common problem.

Portfolio Management: This is the strategic
allocation of resources that ensures innovation efforts advance the
product innovation strategy. This is also the prioritization of projects
in the pipeline to ensure that resources are being tactically deployed
on the right projects for the right reasons. Some key challenges are:
too many projects and not enough resources to get everything done,
difficulty in deciding which projects to select (when evaluating
multiple projects that are competing for the same resources), difficulty
in optimizing the portfolio of projects (i.e. short-term versus
long-term, high-risk versus low-risk), poor alignment on priorities, and
resources that are simply stretched too thinly.

Idea-to-Launch Process: This is the roadmap
or playbook that takes each project from idea to launch including all
of the activities and decisions that must occur in order to be
successful. Some key challenges are: not enough high quality ideas; not
having a standard playbook that can be used repeatedly for projects;
leadership that cannot articulate the importance of their idea-to-launch
process; employees who have not received training or have not developed
a knowledge foundational base on and around innovation best practices;
not tailoring the development process to support the business strategy
and project needs; being unable to say no to projects and/or the need to
be realistic with actual time and resource expectations that otherwise
lead to unrealistic speed-to-market pressures; expectations for resource
commitments to work on projects that are not in the official process;
too many minor projects that negatively impact the resources available
for innovation projects; and the inability to yield effective decisions
in a timely manner (i.e. everything is a high priority thus creating
‘gridlock’ which in turn results in significant delays). It is no wonder
given the above why achieving and then sustaining success is so
difficult for many companies.

Climate and Culture: This is ‘the way the
organization works’: the typical behavior, norms, values and leadership
style that enables or hinders product innovation performance. Some key
challenges are: difficulty in striking a healthy balance between
‘discipline and focus’ and ‘flexibility and judgment’, driving projects
to successful completion while managing cross-functional teams (i.e.
shortage of trained project leaders, staff turnover, gaps in necessary
skills, lack of training and/or experience), management of failure, and
poor support from other parts of the organization. In other words,
creating and supporting a climate and culture that supports innovation
company-wide.

How is your organization performing at product innovation and how
does it compare to other companies? Without clear metrics and a way to
compare them it can be difficult to know whether you are doing good or
bad at product innovation; whether your investment in R&D is
producing the desired results, and what areas of your performance in and
around the Innovation Performance Framework might need to be improved
or strengthened. The good news is you can change, the question is do you want to?

Tuesday, 24 September 2013

Singapore will impose new rules
prodding companies to consider locals before hiring foreigners
for professional jobs, according to the Ministry of Manpower.

The city state will set up a job bank where companies are
required to advertise positions before applying for so-called
employment passes for foreign professionals, it said. The
advertisements must be open to all Singaporeans.

“Even as we remain open to foreign manpower to complement
our local workforce, all firms must make an effort to consider
Singaporeans fairly,” Acting Manpower Minister Tan Chuan-Jin
said in a statement today. “‘Hiring-own-kind’ and other
discriminatory practices that unfairly exclude Singaporeans run
against our fundamental values of fairness and meritocracy.”

Singapore tightened restrictions on foreign workers for a
fourth straight year in February, in part because of voter
discontent over congestion, rising property prices and greater
competition for jobs and education. The curbs have led to a
labor crunch and rising wage costs for companies, which the
government has said will probably hurt growth in Southeast
Asia’s only advanced economy.

Local Talent

Responding to feedback from Singaporeans that some
companies are hiring foreigners over citizens, Tan and Deputy
Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam met with senior management
in a number of financial companies to emphasize that they should
make a concerted effort to develop a local talent pipeline, the
manpower minister said in Parliament in March.

“We must set expectations about what is acceptable and
what is not,” Tan said today. “It requires persuasion,
explanation and leading by example. The worst employers must be
taken to task.”

Singapore will also raise the minimum pay for employment-pass holders to S$3,300 ($2,600) a month in January, according
to the statement. The job bank will be set up by mid-2014, it
said. Companies with 25 or fewer employees will be exempt from
the new rules, as well as jobs that pay a fixed monthly salary
of S$12,000 or more, according to the statement.

The government will also identify firms “that have scope
to improve,” such as those with a lower concentration of
Singaporeans at the professional, managerial and executive
levels, compared to their peers, or those that have faced
nationality-based discriminatory complaints, the ministry said.

Foreign employment growth in Singapore slowed in the first
half of 2013 from a year earlier and the labor market will
remain tight for the rest of 2013, the ministry said this month.

Singapore Foreigner Curbs Target Professionals: Southeast Asia

Singapore's Tan on Foreign-Worker Curbs

Singapore will widen foreign-worker curbs to professional jobs as the
government clamps down on companies that hire overseas talent at the
expense of citizens, stepping up efforts to counter a backlash against
immigration.

The Southeast Asian nation said yesterday it will set up a job bank
where companies are required to advertise positions to Singaporeans
before applying for so-called employment passes for foreign
professionals. The unprecedented policy will target jobs that currently
pay at least S$3,000 ($2,400) a month.

“There are concerns among
Singaporeans, which I think is fair, and so it’s timely for us to
introduce this,” Acting Manpower Minister Tan Chuan-Jin
said in a Bloomberg Television interview yesterday. “There are
Singaporeans out there, well-skilled and capable, who are looking for
jobs and I think this step would actually facilitate that process.”

The
country is persisting with a four-year campaign to reduce its reliance
on foreign workers, after years of open immigration policy led to voter
discontent over increased competition for housing, jobs and education.
The move has led to a labor shortage and pushed up wages, prompting some
companies to seek cheaper locations.

“This is a step up from the government’s efforts to tighten the quality and the quantity of the foreign worker inflows,” said Chua Hak Bin,
an economist at Bank of America Corp. in Singapore. “We’re moving to
another phase now where they’re looking to ensure that opportunities for
the middle-income Singaporeans are maintained.”

Better Matching

Singapore
will also raise the minimum pay for employment-pass holders by 10
percent to S$3,300 a month in January, the Ministry of Manpower said in a
statement
yesterday. The job bank will be set up by mid-2014, it said. Companies
with 25 or fewer employees will be exempt from the new rules, as well as
jobs that pay a fixed monthly salary of S$12,000 or more, the ministry
said.

“It makes a lot of sense to hire locally from the
communities that we operate in,” said Audrey Tan, a Singapore-based
spokeswoman for Pratt & Whitney, the jet-engine unit of United
Technologies Corp., where Singaporeans make up 75 percent of its more
than 2,000 workforce in the city.

The nation’s unemployment rate rose to 2.1 percent in the second quarter, with the resident jobless rate at about 3 percent.

That
“translates to 50,000, 60,000 Singaporeans without jobs,” Tan, the
minister, said. “What the regime allows is that there may be a better
matching of demand and supply” between companies and job-seekers, he
said.

Fewer Locals

The government will also identify
firms “that have scope to improve,” such as those with a lower
concentration of professional Singaporeans compared with industry peers,
or those that have faced nationality-based discriminatory complaints,
the ministry said.

Responding to feedback from Singaporeans that some companies are hiring foreigners over citizens, Tan and Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam
met with senior management in a number of financial companies to
emphasize that they should make a concerted effort to develop a local
talent pipeline, the manpower minister said in Parliament in March.

Citigroup Inc., which has about 10,000 employees in Singapore, said citizens and permanent residents make up 82 percent of its workforce.

‘Right Balance’

“It is essential that we strike the right balance,” Adam Rahman,
a Singapore-based spokesman at the bank, said in an e-mail. “It is
important to have some foreign talent who have global perspectives,
expertise and skills to complement the overall development of Singapore
as an international financial hub.”

Standard Chartered Plc,
which has 7,600 employees in the city, said it will study the impact of
the framework, which it expects will create more opportunities for
locals. “The new portal will provide greater transparency and continue
to promote fairness in hiring processes,” Peter Hatt, head of human
resources for Singapore and Southeast Asia, said in an e-mail.

Singapore
was ranked the most-favored expat destination based on economic factors
such as income and housing in a 2012 survey of more than 100 countries
released by HSBC Holdings Plc. Including the criteria of lifestyle and well-being of children, Hong Kong topped the list.

Second Choice

“Hong
Kong and Singapore vie for talent on an ongoing basis,” said Marc
Burrage, regional director of Hays Plc in Hong Kong. “If these changes
are going to make it harder for expats to find work in Singapore, then
what that could mean is that people will start to consider Hong Kong
whereas in the past it may have been their second choice in Asia.”

Singapore’s inflation rate
quickened to 2 percent in August. Domestic cost pressures are expected
to persist amid continuing tightness in the labor market, the central
bank and the trade ministry said in a statement yesterday.

“Further tightening on foreign labor participation should place upward pressure on wages and therefore core inflation,” said Daniel Wilson, an economist at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. in Singapore.

The
city’s population has jumped by more than 1.1 million since mid-2004 to
5.3 million, driven by immigration. A proposal to boost the population
to 6.9 million by 2030 prompted thousands to protest in February.

The framework “is designed to placate the electorate,” said Lee Quane, Hong Kong-based regional director at ECA International,
which provides research on employment, relocation and compensation.
“The impact is going to be negligible. Singapore has almost full
employment.”

The city studied employment policies in markets
including Hong Kong, the U.S. and U.K. before developing its framework,
the minister said.

“We’re very mindful that there’s no one silver
bullet that solves everything and we’re also mindful that every country
has their own slightly different circumstances,” Tan said.

Monday, 23 September 2013

Bo Xilai (sitting on the defendant's seat), former secretary of the Chongqing Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and a former member of the CPC Central Committee Political Bureau, is sentenced to life imprisonment for bribery, embezzlement and abuse of power at the Jinan Intermediate People's Court in Jinan City, capital of east China's Shandong Province, Sept. 22, 2013. He was deprived of political rights for life. The court announced the verdict. (Xinhua/Xie Huanchi)

Bo Xilai (C), former secretary of the Chongqing Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and a former member of the CPC Central Committee Political Bureau, is sentenced to life imprisonment for bribery, embezzlement and abuse of power, at the Jinan Intermediate People's Court in Jinan City, capital of east China's Shandong Province, Sept. 22, 2013. He was deprived of political rights for life. The court announced the verdict. (Xinhua/Xie Huanchi)

Bo Xilai, former secretary of the Chongqing Municipal Committee of the
Communist Party of China (CPC) and a former member of the CPC Central
Committee Political Bureau, was sentenced to life imprisonment on Sunday
for bribery, embezzlement and abuse of power.

He was deprived of political rights for life, and his personal assets were also confiscated.

The Jinan Intermediate People's Court in east China's Shandong Province announced the verdict.

Bo
was found guilty of taking bribes totaling 20.44 million yuan (about
$3.3 million), either personally or through his family members, between
1999 and 2012.

Bo's position had been rising during this period,
from the mayor of the Dalian in northeast Liaoning province, to the CPC
secretary of the city, to the governor of Liaoning and Commerce
Minister.

In return, Bo helped Dalian International Development
Co. Ltd., of which Tang Xiaolin was general manager, in taking over the
Dalian City liaison office in Shenzhen and also helped Tang obtain quota
licenses for importing cars, the court said.

According to court
findings, Bo granted Xu Ming, chairman of Dalian Shide Group Co. Ltd.,
favors in the company's introduction of a football-like sightseeing
hot-air balloon and in its bid for a petrochemical project.

The
court found that Bo directly accepted cash totaling 1.1 million yuan
from Tang. He was aware of and showed no objection to the fact that his
wife Bogu Kailai and their son, Bo Guagua, accepted monetary gains and
properties worth 19.33 million yuan from Xu.

According to the
verdict, Bo Xilai, while Party chief Dalian in 2000, assigned Wang
Zhenggang, then urban planning chief of the city, to take charge of a
project to be built by Dalian for an unidentified higher authority.

In
March 2002, after the project was completed, the higher authority
allocated 5 million yuan to refund the project. Wang proposed that Bo,
who had moved to become the governor of Liaoning, use money to cover the
expenses of his family. Bo consented and asked Wang to approach his
wife Bogu Kailai for the matter.

The 5 million yuan was eventually transferred to an account designated by Bogu.

The
court's judgement said on Nov. 13, 2011, Bogu and Zhang Xiaojun
murdered British citizen Neil Heywood by poisoning him at the Lucky
Holiday Hotel in Chongqing. Heywood's body was found on Nov. 15.

Guo
Weiguo, then deputy police chief of Chongqing, was in charge of the
Heywood case, but he failed to pursue the case to protect Bogu, the
court said.

On Jan. 28, 2012, Wang Lijun, then Chongqing's police
chief and vice mayor, told Bo Xilai, then Chongqing's Party chief and
member of the CPC Central Committee Political Bureau that Bogu was the
suspect.

Bo later lashed out at Wang for framing a murder accusation against Bogu, slapping Wang's face and smashing a cup.

At
the request of Bogu, Bo asked Wu Wenkang, then deputy secretary general
of Chongqing's Party committee, to launch an investigation against Wang
Zhi and Wang Pengfei.

The two had been involved in the
investigation of the Heywood case but had then handed over a resignation
letter in order to expose the murder case.

Bo asked Chongqing's
Public Security Bureau to interrogate Wang Pengfei. Bo proposed and
approved the withdrawal of the nomination of Wang Pengfei as a candidate
for deputy head of Yubei District of Chongqing.

In his bid to
prevent a review of the Heywood case, Bo also violated the
organizational procedures and convened a Standing Committee meeting of
the CPC Chongqing Municipal Committee to remove Wang Lijun from his
position as Chongqing's police chief.

After Wang Lijun's
defection to the US Consulate General in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan
province on Feb. 6, Bo allowed his wife to take part in official
meetings to deal with the impact, and sanctioned her suggestion of
asking a hospital to fake a diagnosis that Wang suffered from mental
illness. Bo also approved the release of the false information that Wang
was receiving a "vacation-style treatment."

The verdict said
Bo's these actions were important reasons behind Wang's defection and
why the Heywood case was not handled in a timely and legal manner.

All
these had created an extremely adverse social impact and greatly hurt
the interests of the country and its people, the court said.

The
court found Bo guilty of bribe-taking, in that as a public servant, he
used his power to seek benefits for others and illegally took money and
properties from others.

Also as a public servant, Bo took
advantage of his position and embezzled public funds with other
accomplices, the facts of which constituted the crime of embezzlement.

The court said Bo's abuse of power is extremely serious and has led to huge losses to the state and the people.

The
court held that there are sufficient and authentic evidences to support
prosecutors' charges against Bo: accepting bribes worth 20.44 million
yuan (about $3.3 million), embezzling public funds of 5 million yuan and
abusing his power.

Though Bo himself and his lawyer had denied
all three charges, the court said these charges are supported by
testimonies by several witnesses including Tang Xiaolin, Xu Ming, Bogu
Kailai, Wang Zhenggang, Wang Lijun and others, as well as other evidence
such as photographs of physical evidence, documentary evidence and
electronic data.

In addition, Bo himself has also confessed to part of the facts, and his confession corroborated with those facts.

The
court did, however, exclude 1.34 million yuan from the bribery accepted
by Bo, saying that there are not enough evidence to support the charge
that Xu Ming paid the amount in air tickets for Bogu Kailai and Bo
Guagua and that Bo was aware of this.

The illicit money and goods that Bo accepted as bribes or embezzled have been recovered or compensated, the court said.

Sunday, 22 September 2013

When you read this letter, I am no more
in this world.It was my original intention to pass away quietly and let
my relatives handle the funeral matters in private. However, the
repercussions of erroneous media reports of me in critical condition
during October 2011, had persuaded me that leaving behind such a letter
is desirable.

Ever since I joined the Communist Party
of Malaya and eventually became its secretary-general, I have given both
my spiritual and physical self in the service of the cause that my
party represented, that is, to fight for a fairer and better society
based on socialist ideals. Now with my passing away, it is time that my
body be returned to my family.

I draw immense comfort in the fact that
my two children are willing to take care of me, a father who could not
give them family love, warmth and protection ever since their birth. I
could only return my love to them after I had relinquished my political
and public duties, ironically only at a time when I have no more life
left to give to them as a father.

It was regrettable that I had to be
introduced to them well advanced in their adulthood as a stranger. I
have no right to ask them to understand, nor to forgive. They have no
choice but to face this harsh reality. Like families of many martyrs and
comrades, they too have to endure hardship and suffering not out of
their own doing, but out of a consequence of our decision to challenge
the cruel forces in the society which we sought to change.

It is most unfortunate that I couldn’t,
after all, pay my last respects to my parents buried in hometown of
Sitiawan (in Perak), nor could I set foot on the beloved motherland that
my comrades and I had fought so hard for against the aggressors and
colonialists.

My comrades and I had dedicated our lives to a political cause that we
believed in and had to pay whatever price there was as a result.
Whatever consequences on ourselves, our family and the society, we would
accept with serenity.

In the final analysis, I wish to be
remembered simply as a good man who could tell the world that he had
dared to spend his entire life in pursuit of his own ideals to create a
better world for his people.

It is irrelevant whether I succeeded or
failed, at least I did what I did. Hopefully the path I had walked on
would be followed and improved upon by the young after me. It is my
conviction that the flames of social justice and humanity will never
die. – September 21, 2013.

* Chin Peng died at hospital in Bangkok on Malaysia Day, September 16, 2013 at the age of 89. This is his final letter to his comrades and compatriots published in his memorial booklet.

* This is the personal opinion of the
writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of
The Malaysian Insider.

MY COMMENT: My views on the status of the late Chin Peng are well known.
I think his remains should be brought home and his wish to be interred
with his parents should be granted. It is not being magnanimous but
about honouring our treaty obligations.

I
therefore compliment the former Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri
Rahim Noor for standing up for the rights of Chin Peng under the 1989
Hatyai Peace Agreement between the Malaysian Government and the
Communist Party of Malaya (CPM). On the other hand, former Prime
Minister Tun Dr. Mahathir under whose administration the peace deal was
signed did not make any comment on the Chin Peng matter. I suppose it is
convenient for him not speak on this issue since his son, Dato Mukhriz,
has entered the race for UMNO Vice Presidency.

Now
that Chin Peng is dead, his cremated remains should be brought home to
be buried beside his parents. This is not about politics. It is the most
honorable and decent thing to do. We must also learn to accept our
history, and recognise that Chin Peng fought the Japanese and British
imperialists, although we may not accept his ideology and methods. More
importantly, when our government signed that peace treaty, we accepted
him and his comrades as non-combatants and partners in peace.

Yes,
many lives were lost during the Emergency (1948-1960). Armed conflicts
cost lives. The United States lost 55,000 soldiers and Vietnam many
times more. But once the Americans and the Vietnamese signed the Paris
Peace agreement, they began the process of rebuilding their relations,
and today both former combatants are working together to advance their
common interests. Reconciliation is possible only if we can come to
terms with our past and learn the lessons of our history.–Din Merican

The death of Chin Peng has created a buzz about the
relevance of the Red spectre in Malaysia, especially among Malaysian Gen
Yers.

IT has been an educational week for finance manager Rita Wong* as
she tried to find the answers for her 10-year-old son’s questions.

“He’s always curious and this week it has been all about Chin Peng,”
Wong relates. “‘Who is he, mum; why can’t he come home; why do we have
to be scared of his ashes?’”

Wong, a 40-something working mother, says she has had to recall her
history lessons in school but even then “most of the answers he is
asking for are hard to give as I don’t really understand it myself.”

Chin Peng, the Malayan-born guerilla who led a fierce Communist
insurgency against the British in the peninsula after World War Two, and
later against the government after independence, died early last week
after living in exile in Thailand for more than two decades. He had
fought alongside the British during the Japanese military occupation,
but had started a fight to establish an independent Communist state here
in 1948.

Thousands were reportedly killed during the insurgency, tagged by
the British administration as the Malayan Emergency, that lasted until
1960.

Hence, even in death, his name still evokes much bitterness in
Malaysia, as seen during the week in the media and social media network.

“I can never forgive him because the Communists killed my grandfathers and uncles,” says a marketing manager in his 30s.

But for over 80% of the Malaysian population aged below 55 (some
25,610,000 Malaysians) who would have been in their diapers or not born
when the Emergency ended, Chin Peng remains a distant grandfather story
or, at the most, an answer to an examination question.

With his death, many are saying it’s time to also put the CPM ghost to rest, as can be seen in the comments in cyber space.

“Does Chin Peng’s death really matter?” writes secondary school
student Tianqian Tong. “I thought he had died for years actually...”

Like many young people, Tong does not see Chin Peng and communism as a security threat any more.

“Chin Peng and the CPM are in the past, not in the present, neither
will they be in the future. We are now free and independent,” notes
Tong.

“Anyway, history is a lesson for the future – every single thing
will be remembered. It will be good for us to learn that ‘In the
practice of tolerance, one’s enemy is the best teacher’.”

A number of the comments in cyber space are also quite light-hearted
and related to a topic that’s very popular among Gen Yers these days.

“His ashes could spread around the country and invade the body of
every Malaysian. This could be worse than an alien invasion ...” says
one in a long line of zombie jokes about the “Chin Peng ashes – to
return or not to return” debate.

A budding entrepreneur who only wants to be known as Amin admits
that he finds the issue a tad confusing. “We all now want to ‘make
friends’ with communist China and break into their market,” he observes.

Chin Peng and the CPM have not been a valid bogeyman for a long time, local theatre director and lecturer Mark Teh says.

“Bogeymen are ghosts or phantoms. The reason we have them is to create an irrational fear in people,” he opines.

For many young people, the Emergency and communists are lumped
together with the Japanese Occupation and fight for indepen­dence under
the topic of “War in History”, Teh points out.

“Many do not know the difference. But it is not completely their
fault that they are confused. It’s because the history books present it
in a sketchy manner. It is presented in a linear way that does not add
up sometimes and discussions are not encouraged.”

This may have led to a thirst for information on communism among
some, but not to the point where they want to stage a revolution, he
adds.

“They are intrigued by it because of the gaps in history but I don’t
think they are interested in the ideology or to embrace communism.”

Teh, who used to teach Culture and Society in Malaysia, had
organised an “Emergency Festival” with a loose collective of young
artists in 2008 to mark the 60th anniversary of the insurgency.

It was an attempt to re-examine the documents, images and narratives
of the Malaysian Emergency from the younger generation’s perspective,
he explains.

“We saw many students participate because they wanted to create
alternative spaces for themselves and answer the questions they have
about this part of Malaysian history.”

Teh feels this is the underlying issue in the debate on Chin Peng and the CPM’s role in the struggle for independence.

“The argument is contemporary because it is really about people
fighting for their own version of Malaysia now – and they are reclaiming
a past, whether it includes the CPM, Chin Peng or a past that excludes
their contribution or labels them only as terrorist,” he says.

Writer Zedeck Siew, in his 20s, agrees, saying that any interest in
communism among the young is mainly due to the suppression of
communism’s place in history.

“In the classroom, we had the impression of the communist as an
evil, grimacing Chinese fellow creeping through the jungle, killing cops
and citizens. People have realised that this is not a complete picture.

“Those who want to learn about the CPM and Chin Peng are merely trying to find out more about the country’s past,” he reasons.

Crucially, interest does not equal participation, he stresses.
“Frankly, I just can’t see my peers leaving their iPad, artisanal
cupcakes and comfortable suburban warrens to join a people’s Armed
Struggle and subsist on rations.”

Women rights activist Smita E concurs, saying that young people now
seem to be largely anti-ideological. “I base this statement on my
observation that people don’t read enough and don’t have time to read
big books and think big thoughts.”

What is true, however, is that young people are starved for local
histories, she adds. “It’s about alternative histories, not communism per se.”

Postgraduate student Ahmad Z also feels ideology rarely survives
these days. “The grand narrative is history, though I believe young
people see communism as a symbolic representation of change.

“If there is a resurgence in interest, it is a romantic interest of
communism in Malaysia but not in the sense that people are trying to
revive it and to suddenly pick up arms,” he says.

Putting the academic input into the issue, Boon Kia Meng believes
that for many young people, the communist armed struggle belongs in the
annals of history now.

“As Chin Peng mentioned in his memoirs, he was a man of his time and
circumstances, where the world, in the immediate aftermath of the
Japanese occupation, was overtaken by nationalist and anti-colonial
movements and liberation struggles,” explains the academic.

“The armed resistance of the CPM was conditioned by those wars and
the realistic options before them, in the context of British detention
of firstly the Malay anti-colonial Left (a thousand were detained before
the Emergency) and the crackdown on labour unions and political groups.
The Emergency in 1948 was the culmination of British desire to secure
their economic and geopolitical interests in the region.

“The CPM, rightly or wrongly, decided on armed struggle in the face of such challenges.”

Today, conditions are very different, says Boon. “A measure of
formal democratic institutions has prevailed, and capitalism is
triumphant globally, including in so-called communist China. As such,
the bogeyman of communist terror in Malaysia is no longer a plausible
claim.”

In fact, he highlights, most left-wing political movements today are democratic grassroots movements or parties.

“Just look at the elected governments of Bolivia, Venezuela and
Ecuador, or even the growing popularity of the Greek radical left,
Syriza (a likely winner in the next Greek elections) and the Occupy Wall
Street movement. They are all non-violent, popular struggles.”

Ironically, even Chin Peng had noted the change of the times. Writing in his 2003 memoir My Side of History,
he said: “A revolution based on violence has no application in modern
Malaysia or Singapore... The youths who have known only stable
governments and live in an independent age of affluence will find the
choices I made as a teenager deeply puzzling... I was young in a
different age that demanded very different approaches.”

He also stated that one of his final wishes was to “exchange views
with young Malaysians nowadays to understand how history is shaped,
exchanging ideas about how things move the world.”

Open dialogue and ­reconciliation

For many young people, an open dialogue on Chin Peng and communism is something they hope will happen now.

Student Nik Zurin Nik Rashid says it might be difficult for them to
feel the victims’ experience but it will not hamper them from
empathising.

“To ask the current generation that live in ignorance of such an
experience is like asking a Malaysian what it feels like to be at
Auschwitz: they can’t answer, and neither should they,” says the
19-year-old who is currently an undergraduate in a university in Texas.

The fact is that in the modern context, any way you look at it, the CPM is no longer around, she says.

“The CPM is no longer the enemy for the simple fact that it does
not, for all intents and purposes, exist as a cohesive force that
mobilises the masses since it signed the armistice with our government
in 1989. By that alone, they are no longer the “Number One Enemy” as
much as the Russian Federation is no longer a de facto enemy to Nato or
the US since the Soviet Union collapsed.”

Nevertheless, she does not believe the CPM deserves any form of pardon.

“If Hitler is still unforgiven for his crimes, then I don’t see why
Chin Peng needs to be forgiven for his Red Terror campaigns during the
Emergency.

“To many, Chin Peng and his Commies will not be forgiven, and that is understandable.”

Alternative musician A. Nair feels that an open dialogue will help reconcile our nation with its painful past.

“If we try to be politically correct all the time, we will not get
any idea across. If the older generation gets upset about us not caring
or being insensitive about what they went through, it is something we
need to learn to understand.

“But they also need to understand that it is not relevant to us now.
We are moving towards a developed society, so we need to be more open
and less sensitive.”

No going back: For many young people, the communist armed struggle belongs in the annals of history now. — Filepic

The Star’s teen and youth pullout Stuff@school readers have their say on Facebook. Some comments had to be edited.

Tan Kar Can, 20, Brickfields Asia College

Compared with communist countries like China, the term communism is
not even feared by most people in the world in this era. Chin Peng’s
death has caused many people to have negative opinions about whether
communism still exists in the country or not.

Communism has already been eradicated in our country and we should
not fear communism any more. Instead, why not focus on eliminating
corruption and gangsters which recently became the fear of the nation?

Shelbie Diana, 18, St Joseph Private Secondary School

Frankly speaking, I do not think that the party is a threat to our
nation building right now. Media and national portrayal of the party
wasn’t in the Sejarah syllabus. The young are simply taught communism is
a game of violence and it stops at that.

The CPM that Chin Peng spearheaded was once a symbol that the nation
demonised and derided but if learned methodically, this party’s
downfall could be a lesson for the future.

Chin Peng died as a man in exile, wildly reviled in his lifetime. I
believe he has paid the price for his political rebellion against the
nation. The crime sure is heinous, but the stone that the builder
refused will always be the head cornerstone. One has to clearly know he
did contribute to free Tanah Melayu from the Japanese back then. We were
taught to forgive.

Arivaran Ravichantar, 20, cadet pilot

Basically, the CPM fought for independence for our country and their
motive was to set a Communist country. They would have succeeded if the
British hadn’t given us our first election to make way for
independence.

Their methods may have not been the best and may have hurt a lot of
people, but nobody can deny that the CPM played a role in chasing out
the Japanese in a short period of time. They may be also an indirect
reason for the British to give us independence.

Na Yi Lun, 19, SMK Dato’ Penggawa Barat

Unlike some countries like North Korea, we do not have to worry
about communism in our country. The CPM was established to drive out
invaders from our land. During WWII, that was the Japanese. If not for
their efforts, independence for our country would probably be delayed or
we may still be under British rule till today.

In war, it is difficult to differentiate the enemy and the innocent.
Humans are prone to mistakes, and in war, people make many mistakes.

Xina Ter, 17, SMK Sungai Ara

In my opinion, the CPM shouldn’t be considered No.1 enemy now. The
party has long been inactive. I think the most dangerous thing to us now
is racism and corruption. I think if we are united, regardless of race,
we will be able to achieve almost anything. But when we are divided,
even though we have the best leader in the universe, we will still be
unable to achieve much.

Seet Rui Xi, 17, SMK Canossa Convent

The CPM is no longer a threat to our country. Are they the people
gunning down innocent civilians in broad daylight? No. Are they causing
discord, division and disharmony in society? No. Are they putting our
independence at stake? No.

People who do not have the best interests of Malaysia at heart and
people who do not consider national harmony a priority, people who are
consumed with fulfilling their selfish agendas without considering how
they will affect Malaysia’s future, and people who politicise every
single thing possible are bigger threats to Malaysia.

Chin Peng’s wake a low-key affair

Gen Kitti (right) and Gen Pisarn paying their last respects to Chin Peng at Wat That Thong temple in Bangkok.

BANGKOK: It was a calm and low-key affair as the
body of the late Chin Peng was brought into a prayer hall at Bangkok’s
Wat That Thong temple.

Some 30 people, mainly comrades of his
outlawed Communist Party of Malaya and relatives, were present to pay
their last respects at his wake yesterday.

Chin Peng’s two
children, believed to be in their 60s, were said to be absent from the
ceremony but a white and yellow wreath bearing their names stood next to
the casket.

Saturday, 21 September 2013

Every company has ideas that come up (sometimes frequently). And,
based on the stage of the startup and the degree to which the idea is
unconventional, there are always good, rational reasons why the given
idea can't possibly work. There are also bad, irrational reasons too.
The problem is, it's hard to tell the difference.

Here are some of common reasons why something won't work:

We've debated this several times before and have decided it wouldn't work.

We've tried this before, it didn't work.

Doesn't really fit our sales model.

It's not appropriate for our industry.

It might work for tiny/small/large/huge companies, but we sell to
tiny/small/large/huge companies, and it won't work for them.

Our investors/board would never agree to it.

It might work, but we can't afford the risk that it won't. (Note:
When someone says “it might work…but…” they're almost always thinking:
It won't work)

Our team/plan/pitch-deck is not really setup for that.

We could try it, but it's a distraction. (Note: This often means
“I've already decided it's not going to work, but I can tell I need to
convince you we shouldn't try it…”)

There are many, many more reasons why any given idea won't work, but
the above are a sufficient sample for this article. Oh, and by the way, I
have at various points in time made all of these very same arguments
myself (“I have met the enemy” and all that)

2 Mental Exercises To Try

Now, here are a couple of mental exercises to try when you or you or your team is stuck.

Exercise #1: What if I told you that it's working really, really well for XYZ Company? How do you think they made it work?

The idea here is to assume the idea is good and has
worked for a company very similar to yours. Then, ask yourself (or
your team): Now that we know it worked for them, what do we think they
did to make it work?

What this does is mentally nudge you to think about how to work
through whatever the obvious limitations to the idea already are.

Example: I know that nobody in our industry uses a freemium model
because the infrastructure/support costs are just too high. But, we
just learned that XYZ Company is launching a free version. What do we
think they did to make it work?

Exercise #2: What if we had the proverbial gun held to our heads and we had to do [x]?

The idea here is to assume/accept that the decision to implement the idea has already been made — presumably by some higher authority. Now, assuming that, what would you do to make the best of it?

Example: Our major investors just told us that before they can agree
to funding our next round, we need to build an inside sales team. They
think inside sales teams are the bomb. We can't afford not to listen to
them — what do we do to make the best of the situation? If we had to build an inside sales team, how would we go about doing it?

Note: In neither case am I suggesting that you mislead your team (or
yourself, in case you're like me and have conversations with yourself
late at night). These are meant to be mental exercises, just
to help drive discussion and analysis. Though I'll confess, there is a
small part of me that wonders what would happen if one did make the hypothetical seem real (at least for a short period of time).

What do you think? Any mental tricks or tactics you've used (or thought of using) to help break-through conventional thinking?